Crowbars and Skulls and Ponies

SEGA was forced to take down a website promoting the upcoming release of Condemned 2: Bloodshot after Hasbro complained about a character bearing a striking resemblance to those in its 'My Little Pony' franchise. Mumble WTF to yourself and read on.

To promote the next episode in its popular dark fantasy franchise, SEGA created an animated Flash world populated with clowns, butterflies, candy throwing Oompa Loompa-like elves and, of course, Percy the Pony. Mashing up Saturday Morning culture with John Wayne Gacy, the site mocks the sanitized, infantilizing smarminess so prevalent in the product-driven cartoons of the 1980s and early 1990s. Clicking on the happy characters swinging from clouds and dancing in pastures triggers music videos where the saccharin-voiced toons sing about rusty razor blades, bums in dumpsters and the joy of spilling blood. Obviously, when it came to Percy the Pony, Hasbro was not amused.

Bloodied but unbowed, SEGA has since restored the site, now sporting a tombstone in the corner with today's date on it. Though you can no longer hear Percy and her friends sing about dismembered body parts under a rainbow sky, the rest of the cast remains intact.

The entire affair is a near-perfect microcosm of the issue of violence in games. Game publisher releases a product that is easily taken as marketed, you know, for kids but is actually only appropriate for adults. Said game publisher has blown it by not making this fact clearer, so now the adults in the audience are forced to fight over access to something they've every right to. Offsetthevil.com's creators have expertly satirized the tension between children, violence and videogames. And they've done so with an amazing grasp of bad taste.

If offsettheevil.com finds its way into the mainstream, it's almost a guaranteed firestarter for the industry, especially since there isn't even an age confirmation dialog required to view the site. Given the undeniable humor and chilling juxtaposition of candy ponies and murderous footage from the game, we'll almost surely be hearing more about this in the news.

Bottom line: At this point, two generations of gamers have now grown up into adults, and many of these adults are no longer interested in playing in the same worlds that entranced them as 10-year-olds. Some of them, in fact, are interested in some very dark themes, as is their prerogative. For them, we present the posthumous Percy video below. For the rest...well, Hasbro has a cute plastic pony to sell you.

[via Sydney Morning Herald]